Jimmy Joste, an oil industry powerhouse, was a slave to Rhonda Glover and gave her everything her greedy heart desired. Their 15 years of passion ended the day she entered the Austin home they once shared and pumped ten bullets into him. Rumours of child porn, drugs, and sex trysts quickly spread across the Lone Star State. In a packed courtroom, jurors would learn how a beautiful woman could be a monster.

Rich men beat up their rich wives with the same alcohol and drug fueled intensity as do the abject poor and unemployed. It doesn’t much matter if the man slugs the woman after several shots of single malt scotch or numerous hits off a glass pipe. The impact is exactly the same. There are women huddled in fear behind the solid-core doors of Austin’s finest homes, and in Houston’s luxurious high rise condominiums.

“On July 21st, 2004, just 5 days before my birthday, I was brutally attacked, choked, and my life threatened by my ex-boyfriend, in my home in Austin, Texas,” says former rodeo competitor and beauty contestant, Rhonda Glover. In her version of events, she was separated from her long time millionaire boyfriend, Jimmy Joste, because she feared his violent and abusive nature.

“I lived in fear of Jimmy Joste,” insists Rhonda Glover, and her personal recollection of their fifteen year relationship could very well be something such as this: “When I met him, he was warm kind clever and crazy about me. We moved in together, but it wasn’t long before his drunken rage and violent outbursts had me shaking in terror. I couldn’t live with him, and he said he couldn’t live without me. He wouldn’t let me go. He stalked me, he scared me, he bought me, and he forced himself on me. I bore him a son and placated him by allowing him to do what he wanted — to play the part of the generous lover. He could buy me gifts and houses, but he couldn’t claim my heart or my soul. No one except me knows what Jimmy Joste was like behind closed doors. He had one face to his friends, but it was a mask. The dollars he flashed blinded people, including me to his dark side. He was sick, perverted, evil and dangerous. He wasn’t alone in his duplicity and deceit. I can give you names — important names of important people who use their wealth and prestige to obscure their true nature.”

Unable to live together, but tethered by mutual adoration of their son, Rhonda Glover and Jimmy Joste endured a volatile fifteen year whip-lash relationship that was punctuated by frequent visits to their residences by law enforcement.

Police photographs of a beaten and bruised Rhonda Glover, taken after a controversial altercation at Austin’s Barton Creek in 2000, seemingly validate her claims of being a punching bag for Mr. James Joste. Rhonda claims that she broke free from Joste as best she could, living in a different city, and avoiding him at all costs.

“I was terrified that I would be a missing person,” says Glover. “I would be one of those skeletons in a remote area where hikers go, or that I would be a mother searching for her child on an Amber alert. Life was very weird for me. Jimmy had lost his mind. He had a secret life, and after he got comfortable doing drugs in my house, he decided to let me in on his alternative lifestyle and his real worship of Lucifer. He never called him the devil or Satan. I have never known anyone to walk on the dark side like that except a few of the hippies I knew from high school who loved Ozzy for biting the head off that bat, but not true worship and belief that Lucifer was more powerful than God. I am not crazy. I was with a crazy man:”

Rhonda Glover insists that Joste was out of his mind, and that she honestly believed that he was out of town when she went to their Austin residence. “He told me that he was in Colorado,” said Rhonda Glover.

“She called Jimmy before going to the house,” says her attorney, “and she was told by him that he was at one of their favorite restaurants, Meza Luna, in Aspen, Colorado. So she went to the house, parked her car right down from the house, and goes upstairs. There is one bedroom that leads to an unfinished part of the attic where they have Oriental carpets, camping gear and other things that they are storing in the house. And she has her gun. You bet she does.”

According to Glover, she entered the Austin residence she and Joste once shared to reclaim some camping gear from the attic before taking her nine-year-old son, Ronnie, on a planned cross-country excursion in a rented mobile home. Joste, however, surprised her by his sudden appearance.

“She hears the worst sound she could imagine. She hears the garage door opening, then she hears Jimmy coming in, and she hears his voice saying, `I know you are here, bitch.’ And then she hears him coming up the stairs.”

He called out to her as he ascended the stairs, summoning her to confrontation. Trembling in apprehension, Glover thrust a handgun into the waist band of her pants “just in case” as Joste came into the upstairs bedroom that leads through a doorway to the attic. There were no loving moments of greeting or conversation. Joste, according to Glover, threatened her, called her a bitch, said he was going to kill her, and then grabbed her by the throat. “He was choking me, and I reached in and pulled my gun out, and I shot him. I shot him because I thought he was going to kill me. ” Ten bullets tore into James Joste before Rhonda Glover stepped over his dead body. “It was self-defense,” says Glover. “I feared for my life.”

A story such as this — the battered beauty who, in final desperation, pulls a gun out of her jeans and ends the cycle of violence – sounds like a made-for-television movie. “It is more a made-up-excuse for murder,” insists famed private investigator Fred Wolfson who followed the case with interest. “What came out at the trial,” Wolfson recalls, “was that Rhonda Glover didn’t tuck the gun away in her pants, nor did she hastily pull it out when Joste’s hands clenched around her throat.”

Joste never got close enough to lay a hand on Rhonda Glover. Being small in stature and thin of frame, he was never a physical match to the weight-lifting and athletic Glover. “She was waiting for him in the upstairs bedroom,” says Wolfson, “wearing a lovely flower print sun dress with no pockets. In her hand was a freshly loaded Glock 9mm semi-automatic.”

Forensic evidence indicated that Joste saw Glover pointing the gun at him, put up his arms in reflexive self-defense, and staggered backwards when the first four bullets ripped through his flesh. Six more shots were pumped into him either before or after he fell in the hallway. When he was dead on the floor, Rhonda allegedly stood over his blood splattered body and shot him in the testicles.

“Sounds like a clear case of suicide to me,” remarked Wolfson sarcastically. “It was suicide for Joste to have anything to do with Rhonda Glover.”

Reviews

Praise for Fatal Beauty

http://www.burlbarer.net/books/fatal-beauty/

5

Fatal Beauty makes you think, and realize that darkness also lives in the hearts of women, perhaps a wake-up call, that killers can be just as manipulative in a pair of nylons and high heels. But the book is much more than a woman killing her lifetime partner who had it all. Rhonda Glover suffered from a condition directly from hell, her own mind. Glover is unable to process facts from reality. Should Glover have been convicted of murder? Or treated years earlier for mental illness? The author does a remarkable job in taking the reader through this true crime journey. It is a must read!

Nicki - Amazon

Praise for Fatal Beauty

http://www.burlbarer.net/books/fatal-beauty/

5

Burl Barer has written an interesting and provocative look into the mind of a female killer and presents to readers facts that were not brought up in the trial of Rhonda Glover. Readers come away with a better understanding of what went wrong in her mind, what demons live there and how delusional her thoughts become. Personally, I'm always fascinated by, not only the "who done it," but the "why did they do it" and Barer shows the answer is not always given at a trial. Thorough research is evident and through interviews with those surrounding the case, as well as Rhonda Glover herself, we get a better picture. As a relationship gone haywire, Fatal Beauty validates the fact that violence is not gender specific and evil often hides behind beauty.

Delilah - Amazon

Praise for Fatal Beauty

http://www.burlbarer.net/books/fatal-beauty/

5

Anyone familiar with Burl Barer, understands what they're getting in a book written by him long before they turn that first page: In-depth research, exceedingly revealing interviews, and straight-forward answers as to what exactly occurred in each case. And with FATAL BEAUTY he does just that. It's a quick paced narrative that keeps one on the edge of their seat, and sparks that unmistakable feeling that it's all happening right before their eyes. I highly recommend FATAL BEAUTY for anyone who wants to know what a body can do when a mind is in turmoil.